Word: baath
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Duke might just as well write another piece called the Damascus Reel, for Syria, too, underwent a shakeup, quieter but no less significant. Behind the sudden shuffle of Middle Eastern leaders was a power struggle inside a strange new political force, the Baath (Renaissance) Party, which in little less than a year has turned from a shadowy, clandestine movement without popular support into a dynamic power challenging Gamal Abdel Nasser for leadership of the Arab world...
...avowed aim of Baath is to unite Iraq and Syria, which it already controls, and to add all other Arab countries to this union, through persuasion or subversion. Last week's tussles were caused partly by the clash of ambitions within the party, partly by differences over how quickly and radically the Baath aims should be pursued...
...Shadows. In Syria, Premier Salah Bitar, 52, a co-founder of the Baath Party, resigned after being accused in party councils of "self-isolation from the masses." Translation: he must make way for an ambitious, younger rival. The rival: Amin Hafez, 42, Syrian commander in chief and a top party leader, who took over as Premier. As a prelude to his swearing-in, jets whooshed overhead in salute-and to discourage any possible trouble...
...Colonel Munzer Wandari, a fiercely mustachioed fanatic who personally took up a jet fighter and strafed the presidential palace with rockets. When the moderates called on the army for help, troops cleared the streets and jailed Wandari. But he had apparently made his point. An emergency meeting of the Baath high command decided upon a plague-on-both-your-houses gesture: Shabib, Jawad and five aides were hustled into another plane and sent into exile too-in Beirut. Strangely silent in the uproar was the one non-Baathist in a position of power, Iraq's President Abdul Salam Aref...
Until party elections are held some time next year, Iraq will apparently be run by the Baath Central Committee (which includes a Jordanian, a Lebanese and a Kuwaiti as well as Iraqi and Syrian generals) and by Michel Aflak, the Secretary-General and real power in the party. It was the first time that Aflak, a withdrawn, seemingly gentle intellectual who has sanctioned the executions of hundreds of political opponents, emerged from his shadowy position behind the scenes...